Geocaching in Shropshire and beyond…

Granville Country Park series and a FTF

We were having a new boiler put in at home today, which involved a lot of banging in the old airing cupboard by my office, so I decided I would be much better out and about going for the 19 new caches in Granville Country Park instead (tough decision that one – not!).

I parked up in the main car park and set off. The first cache was very close to the car park and was a really easy find as I could see a neat line of sticks at GZ as I walked up. I decided which one to go for next and off I set.

The paths seemed to go a different way than I was expecting so I ended up very close to another cache, so changed my planned route and went to that one instead. A quick find in a place I’d walked past ages ago when doing the older caches in the park.

On the way to the next cache, I had to hold on for a few moments as a lone female dog-walker was ahead and I did not want to spook her. After she’d gone on her way, I headed off and was soon at the next cache. Another quick find. Great to see all the caches in the series are nice big Regular sized boxes with decent swaps in.

The next few caches were all easy enough and nothing much to report on. The next cache had not yet been found – over the weekend lots of cachers had tried and failed, but there was a co-ords change of about 50ft last night, so I was hopeful of finding it. The new co-ords turned out to be bang on and I had an easy find. A nice bonus of being FTF too :-).

A few more caches and I was back at the Jeep. On the way, one of the caches took me to the top of an old slag head (the country park used to be a big mining area) with some great views over towards North Shropshire and Cheshire beyond.

I then moved the Jeep round to the next area of the park and dashed in from the road for a couple of quick cache and dashes. One was a nice BIG ammo box, which is always great to see.

Another move of the Jeep saw me at another area of the woods I’d been to before, and two more quick cache finds.

I then moved the Jeep around to the final location and set off into the woods on foot. I was a bit nervous about the first one as it’s quite close to a primary school, but thankfully the woods were thick and I was able to look for the cache without attracting dodgy glances.

The next one was a quick find, then came the fun for the day. The last cache of the series was about 400ft from the bottom of the hill so off I set. As soon as I reached the bottom I realised the ground was VERY boggy. I ended up almost wading though the mud, sometimes knee deep, before getting to slightly dryer land the other side, near GZ. After that, the cache was an easy find.

A great series, with well placed caches and all a decent size. I’ve really enjoyed my walk around the area this morning. I checked the GPS and it was 3 hours and a minute from finding the first cache in the series, to finding the 19th one.